


The Only Light in the Room

by rileypie



Category: Next to Normal - Kitt/Yorkey
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-12 02:36:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4462121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rileypie/pseuds/rileypie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gabe's presence creates very specific kinds of pain for each of the living Goodmans, but all of them are incapable of ignoring the way he lights up a room.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Only Light in the Room

There were so many ways that life could have been easier for Natalie Goodman.  
  
She could have decided not to care about her grades and Yale. Or she could have quit piano at age eleven when she spent several months hating the instrument. She could have ignored Henry the first time he showed up at her practice room or even turned him away the ninth or tenth times he stood there with that precious grin.  
  
And then there were all the things she had no control over. Life would have been simpler if her mother’s medication ever worked the way the doctors said it would. Or if the woman had never gotten sick in the first place. Or if Natalie weren’t quite as clever and could ignore the distant look in Diana’s eyes every time she looked at her daughter.  
  
But Natalie was clever, and Diana’s medication never worked exactly right, and the way that she never seemed to _quite ___see her daughter never seemed to stop hurting. And yet, even with all of these rules of Natalie’s life that she could and could not control, she could pinpoint the single thing that made her life unbearably and irreparably difficult.  
  
Maybe if she had never caught a glimpse of _him ___she would have been able to continue believing that there was a chance for her mother to notice her. She could have continued thinking that there was a point to all her efforts and maybe someday her mother would actually see her and tell her how proud she was of Natalie and how much she loved her and—  
  
But Natalie had seen her competition.  
  
She was still young the first time she saw her older brother, but she was old enough to know that imaginary friends weren’t real and that whoever he was, she shouldn’t be able to see him.  
  
But she could see him.  
  
And he was perfect.  
  
He was gorgeous and clever and confident, and he waltzed through her house as if it were his own. She supposed that it was. His eyes glittered with mischief, and he hummed an unrecognizable but mesmerizing melody wherever he went. From the other end of the kitchen table he would tease her about working too hard, and some days when she practiced he would watch her, leaning against the piano. Kindness and intelligence and love and charisma and pure _perfection ___emanated from him constantly.  
  
Of course Natalie’s mother couldn’t see her if _he ___was in the room.  
  
Standing beside a prince like him, it was as if Natalie didn’t even exist. She wanted to hate him for it—for everything wrong with her life—but she couldn’t. Every time she saw him, she simply saw all that she should be, but never would. She didn’t see him often at first, but over the years he began to spend more time around her, smirking from the edges of rooms.  
  
Natalie could never bring herself to question why she saw these glimpses of who her brother would have been. For years she thought he was simply part of her imagination or perhaps a hallucination from the constant stress pressing on her shoulders. But then she began seeing him interact with Diana. They would banter in ways that Natalie had never done with her mother, and the pure love that shone in Diana’s eyes as she stared at her perfect-in-all-ways-but-one son felt like daggers of ice in Natalie’s chest.  
  
How could she possibly compete with a son who wasn’t even there? His only flaw was the fact that he had been _dead ___longer than Natalie had been alive. And yet that somehow made him even more perfect in the eyes of Diana.  
  
Natalie wanted to scream. She wanted to tear apart her pillows. She wanted to throw a lamp down the stairs like her mother had done two years before.  
  
But Natalie had a responsibility to herself and her father. The Goodman family did not need two women that couldn’t hold themselves together.  
  
So rather than do any of the things that she so desperately wanted to, Natalie forced herself to sit before the keys of the piano in her favorite practice room. She flipped her book open to the page of the piece she was perfecting this week—not that she needed it; she’d memorized the piece two days ago. Taking a deep breath, Natalie closed her eyes and began to play, letting the tiring stress and the vicious anger and the painful hope and the sight of _his_ smirk all fall away in the sound of the notes.


End file.
